Nature Of Design Research Articles

Research and Solutions: LEED-ing Away from Sustainability: Toward a Green Building System Using Nature's Design

The only truly sustainable designs we know of—the flora and fauna of the Earth—are successful in their sustainability because they interact with the environment in holistic, integrative, and reduct...

Visions of nature: the art and science of Ernst Haeckel

A famous biologist and scientist, Haeckel was also enormously influential in the art world, particularly the Art Nouveau and Surrealist movements, and his elaborate and mesmerising illustrations are the subject of continued interest by artists and designers. From his minutely detailed renderings of radiolarians and his vivid depictions of embryonic development to his softly colored landscapes of the Italian countryside, these vibrant reproductions of Haeckel's art works demonstrate a profound appreciation for nature's intrinsic design that will continue to inspire artists for generations to come. This volume also features numerous never before published works. One of the foremost scholars on Haeckel's work explores in this book his revolutionary and often contentious theories on evolution, as well as his contributions as a scientist and explorer. Haeckel's influence on modern art and culture is also highlighted in the introduction. Fusing scientific thought with philosophy and molecular structure with design, this richly illustrated profile of a revolutionary thinker and brilliant artist will delight Haeckel's ever-growing audience.

Modulus–density scaling behaviour and framework architecture of nanoporous self-assembled silicas

Natural porous materials such as bone, wood and pith evolved to maximize modulus for a given density. For these three-dimensional cellular solids, modulus scales quadratically with relative density. But can nanostructuring improve on Nature's designs? Here, we report modulus-density scaling relationships for cubic (C), hexagonal (H) and worm-like disordered (D) nanoporous silicas prepared by surfactant-directed self-assembly. Over the relative density range, 0.5 to 0.65, Young's modulus scales as (density)n where n(C)<n(H)<n(D)<2, indicating that nanostructured porous silicas exhibit a structure-specific hierarchy of modulus values D<H<C. Scaling exponents less than 2 emphasize that the moduli are less sensitive to porosity than those of natural cellular solids, which possess extremal moduli based on linear elasticity theory. Using molecular modelling and Raman and NMR spectroscopy, we show that uniform nanoscale confinement causes the silica framework of self-assembled silica to contain a higher portion of small, stiff rings than found in other forms of amorphous silica. The nanostructure-specific hierarchy and systematic increase in framework modulus we observe, when decreasing the silica framework thickness below 2 nm, provides a new ability to maximize mechanical properties at a given density needed for nanoporous materials integration.

Review of 'How Blind is the Watchmaker? Nature's Design &amp; the Limits of Naturalistic Science' by Neil Broom

Review of 'How Blind is the Watchmaker? Nature's Design &amp; the Limits of Naturalistic Science' by Neil Broom

Design Parameters and Current Fabrication Approaches for Developing Bioinspired Dry Adhesives

The attachment pads of some beetles, spiders, flies, and geckos are covered by a dense array of long hairs with characteristic geometries. This curious surface topography allows them to firmly attach to and easily release from almost any kind of surface. In a technological context, such reversible adhesion could enable robots to walk along walls or ceilings, or lead to new medical devices, disposable plasters, reusable adhesive tapes, etc. Artificial fibrillar surfaces mimicking nature's design have been recently fabricated, but their adhesion performance is still far from that of natural systems. This review describes the progress in this field during the last few years and discusses the issues pending for the future.

The value of introspection to the designer of mechanical problem solvers

Lately there has been a flurry of interest in constructing artifacts that will behave like living organisms in some useful respect. Since some living organisms are remarkably efficient and successful in performing certain tasks, e.g., sensing very weak signals, recognizing very complex patterns, or traveling over very rough terrain, we are advised to look at Nature's design for suggestions about how to build machines to do such things. But we are immediately up against an awesome obstacle: Nature's design is no easy thing to get at. I t would seem that God is a master at concealing and protecting company secrets. The obstacle seems to be especially awesome for those so brash as to wish to provide machines with intelligence. How do we get at Nature's design of intelligence? Psychologists study this design-though not for the purpose of copying it. This paper considers borrowing and adapting, for just this purpose, a method which psychologists have developed for observing how human beings solve problems.

Applying nature's design: corridors as a strategy for biodiversity conservation

The fragmenting of habitats is endangering animal populations and degrading or destroying many plant populations throughout the world. To address this problem, conservationists have increasingly turned to biological corridors, areas of land set aside to facilitate the movement of species and ecological processes. However, while hundreds of corridor initiatives are under way worldwide, there is little practical information to guide their design, location, and management. Applying Nature's Design offers a comprehensive overview of current knowledge on corridors, their design, and their implementation. Anthony B. Anderson and Clinton N. Jenkins examine a variety of conceptual and practical issues associated with corridors and provide detailed case studies from around the world. Their work considers how to manage and govern corridors, how to build support among various interest groups for corridors, and the obstacles to implementation. In addition to assessing various environmental and ecological challenges, the authors are the first to consider the importance of socioeconomic and political issues in creating and maintaining corridors.

Using nature's design to stem urban storm-water problems

Using nature's design to stem urban storm-water problems

Cracking and adhesion at small scales: atomistic and continuum studies of flaw tolerant nanostructures

Once the characteristic size of materials reaches nanoscale, the mechanical properties may change drastically and classical mechanisms of materials failure may cease to hold. In this paper, we focus on joint atomistic-continuum studies of failure and deformation of nanoscale materials. In the first part of the paper, we discuss the size dependence of brittle fracture. We illustrate that if the characteristic dimension of a material is below a critical length scale that can be on the order of several nanometres, the classical Griffith theory of fracture no longer holds. An important consequence of this finding is that materials with nano-substructures may become flaw-tolerant, as the stress concentration at crack tips disappears and failure always occurs at the theoretical strength of materials, regardless of defects. Our atomistic simulations complement recent continuum analysis (Gao et al 2003 Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 100 5597–600) and reveal a smooth transition between Griffith modes of failure via crack propagation to uniform bond rupture at theoretical strength below a nanometre critical length. Our results may have consequences for understanding failure of many small-scale materials. In the second part of this paper, we focus on the size dependence of adhesion systems. We demonstrate that optimal adhesion can be achieved by either length scale reduction, or by optimization of the shape of the surface of the adhesion element. We find that whereas change in shape can lead to optimal adhesion strength, those systems are not robust against small deviations from the optimal shape. In contrast, reducing the dimensions of the adhesion system results in robust adhesion devices that fail at their theoretical strength, regardless of the presence of flaws. An important consequence of this finding is that even under the presence of surface roughness, optimal adhesion is possible provided the size of contact elements is sufficiently small. Our atomistic results corroborate earlier theoretical modelling at the continuum scale (Gao and Yao 2004 Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 101 7851–6). We discuss the relevance of our studies with respect to nature's design of bone nanostructures and nanoscale adhesion elements in geckos.

Understanding nature's design for a nanosyringe.

Synthetic and natural peptide assemblies can possess transport or conductance activity across biomembranes through the formation of nanopores. The fundamental mechanisms of membrane insertion necessary for antimicrobial or synthetic pore formation are poorly understood. We observe a lipid-assisted mechanism for passive insertion into a model membrane from molecular dynamics simulations. The assembly used in the study, a generic nanotube functionalized with hydrophilic termini, is assisted in crossing the membrane core by transleaflet lipid flips. Lipid tails occlude a purely hydrophobic nanotube. The observed insertion mechanism requirements for hydrophobic-hydrophilic matching have implications for the design of synthetic channels and antibiotics.

Retrospective view of the carotid body research of Ronan G. O'Regan.

The Irish experimental physiologist Ronan G. O'Regan has made a substantial contribution to the field of autonomic control of the carotid body. This brief retrospective has been written by one of his former students, one of many to whom the beauty of Nature's design has been revealed through O'Regan's lectures and scientific papers. I shall describe some of his experiments that were performed from 1965 to 1981 in this historical sketch.

Nature's Design for a Versatile Interaction Domain

The gp130 protein is a shared receptor subunit that binds to at least 10 different cytokines. Boulanger et al. were therefore curious what features of gp130 would allow interaction with such a range of structurally dissimilar cytokines. Comparison of various cytokine-gp130 crystal structures showed that in fact the interactions predominantly occur through a single region of gp130. Furthermore, a crystal structure of the cytokine leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) with the cytokine binding region of gp130 showed this region of the gp130 protein to be unusually rigid. Thus, the authors argue that gp130 is unlikely to accommodate its multiple ligands through conformational changes. Further analysis of the interaction by computational alanine scanning mutagenesis and thermodynamic measurements made by isothermal titration calorimetry support what the authors call a "thermodynamic plasticity" of the interaction site. Depending on the nature of the ligand, the interaction site of gp130 offers either polar interactions or hydrophobic interactions that favor binding in a manner that is relatively insensitive to ligand structure. Release of bound water molecules appears to contribute favorable gain in entropy to the binding reactions. Some gp130-interacting cytokines interact through another domain with a separate α-receptor subunit. In this case, the interaction mechanism is very different: It is sensitive to ligand structure and entropically unfavorable, relying primarily on hydrogen bonds and salt bridges. The authors note that the gp130 system offers a potential therapeutic target for a large range of physiological processes, and better understanding of its multiple interactions may allow strategies that specifically alter a particular action of this multifaceted signaling molecule. M. J. Boulanger, A. J. Bankovich, T. Kortemme, D. Baker, K. C. Garcia, Convergent mechanisms for recognition of divergent cytokines by the shared signaling receptor gp130. Mol. Cell 12 , 577-589 (2003). [Online Journal]

Nature's Design for a Versatile Interaction Domain

Nature's Design for a Versatile Interaction Domain

How to Design Galilean Fall Experiments in Economics

In the social sciences we hardly can create laboratory conditions, we only can try to find out which kinds of experiments Nature has carried out. Knowledge about Nature's designs can be used to infer conditions for reliable predictions. This problem was explicitly dealt with in Haavelmo's (1944) discussion of autonomous relationships, Friedman's (1953) as-if methodology, and Simon's (1961) discussions of nearly-decomposable systems. All three accounts take Marshallian partitioning as starting point, however not with a sharp ceteris paribus razor but with the blunt knife of negligibility assumptions. As will be shown, in each account reflection on which influences are negligible, for what phenomena and for how long, played a central role.

Lipid Membranes: Biological Inspiration for Micro and Nano Encapsulation Technologies, Especially Drug Delivery

AbstractOur approach to biologically inspired materials and materials systems recognizes biology (at all scale levels) as a series ofproductsthat fulfill particular functions. It then links material composition and structure tofunctionthroughpropertiesand therefore attempts to bring mechanism to processes andfunctionsof biology. As an example of this approach we have focused on the lipid bilayer membranes of blood cells, like erythrocytes and neutrophils, as a bioinspired material system for drug delivery leading to the creation of waxy, nano capsules called liposomes that can be triggered to release their drug by hyperthermia. Thus, while Nature's encapsulation technology provides the inspiration, the mechanism of drug release is non-natural. The necessary design parameters for the required functions of drug encapsulation, i.e. drug retention, circulation half life, and eventual thermally-triggered drug release, were obtained through extensive experimentation and modeling of artificial lipid vesicles by us and others, with much of the mechanical and thermomechanical properties, molecular exchange, andin vitroperformance investigated by a direct micropipet manipulation technique. With respect to cancer chemotherapy, the unmet need for primary solid tumors is to deliver more drug to the tumor tissue thereby reducing the tumor size (debulking) while at the same time reducing toxic side effects. It is with these criteria in mind that we developed the temperature-triggered liposome for the treatment of solid tumors. This paper then, describes this liposome development and its performancein vivo, where, in some cases, the temperature-triggered release of drug directly in the blood stream and tumor resulted in complete tumor regression. What this example also shows is that through material property measurement and modeling, new insights into Nature's functions and designs can be discovered in areverse engineeringprocess from which new products can then beforward engineeredto solve engineering and product problems in health, technology, and the environment.

Transcription from the perspective of the DNA: twists and bumps in the road.

Although nature's design of the DNA double helix is ingenious for the storage of information, this design creates topological problems for the processes that occur on the DNA. Cellular processes, such as transcription, replication, chromosomal segregation, and chromosomal condensation, are all complicated by the double helix. The problem is compounded in cells since the DNA is in chromatin. Topoisomerases relax positive and negative superhelical turns in DNA, and thereby topoisomerases have long been recognized as key components of the DNA replication and chromosome segregation and condensation machinery. A role for topoisomerases in the transcription process has also been noted in living cells, but only recently has such a role been recapitulated in the test tube for transcription reactions. New data are discussed that demonstrate that for in vitro transcription reactions, topoisomerases are dispensable when the template is naked DNA, but when the template is reconstituted into chromatin, topoisomerases are required for transcription to proceed efficiently.

Institutions, intentions and international relations

Renewed interest in international institutions makes clear the need for a better theory of institutional possibilities. Friedrich Hayek held that institutions are either designed, though badly, or emerge spontaneously, and providently, as an unintended consequence of agents' self-interested choices. Hayek's historical sketch misses a third set of possibilities reflecting the claim that agents make institutions in keeping with nature's design or, as we say today, make them on some occasions to suit large social purposes. The English School treats institutions as spontaneous developments. Liberal scholars in the US start with the rationalist position that agents design institutions as they see fit, but end up closer to the view that institutions constitute a purposive whole.

Elucidating Nature's Secrets for Creating Extraordinary Biomaterials: How far Have We Come?

Abstract Nature produces exquisite structures under ambient conditions using raw materials found in its immediate environment. Examples of naturally resilient materials seem nearly infinite and include (but not limited to) strong composites like seashells and tough fibers like spider dragline silk, which has a breakage energy per unit weight two orders of magnitude greater than high tensile steel. These natural processes and the resulting materials are ultimately biodegradable and Eco-friendly. Scientists have been interested in nature's designs and processes for hundreds of years. The result of these studies has led to many unique synthetic materials such as KEVLAR™, styrofoam, PLEXIGLAS™, etc. Unfortunately, our “man-made” materials are usually produced under harsh conditions such as high temperatures or under vacuum. Rarely are these processes and the resulting products environmentally friendly. In order to mimic nature's designs, researchers have attempted to understand its basic mechanisms for making these resilient materials by studying the starting materials that nature produces.

Human development by nature's design- a heroic journey for all times

Recently, on two separate occasions, I was asked what my ‘speciality’ was. First my friend, Jock, a newly trained psychotherapist who was interviewing me in order, as he put it, ‘to gather pearls of wisdom from his elders’, asked me the question. I was stumped. Some ‘elder’, I thought, thirty years of practice and teaching and I had yet to declare whether I specialized in ‘trauma’, ‘addiction’, ‘sexual deviance’, or what (all terms that he offered to try to help me to decide).

Biosensors @ CSEM

Biosensor systems are man-made operational mimics of nature's design and efficiency. They are hybrid constructs consisting of biomolecules, transducers and instrument components, designed to specifically detect and identify substances that are relevant for diagnosis or process surveillance. The Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) fosters biosensor-system applications for the detection of constituents and additives in food, and for prognostic or diagnostic identification of drugs and metabolites. Instruments and biosensor platforms are developed on the basis of advanced detection principles. Optical and electrochemical platforms are improved in efficiency and value through assay-specific surface bioengineering. Device miniaturization and large-scale manufacturability, combined with instrumental simplicity are adopted properties of CSEM's application-specific biosensor systems. Major current biosensor developments include the detection of infectious prion proteins in livestock and antibiotics in milk.